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This article discusses the role of traditional Maori healers (tohunga) and analyses an attempt by the New Zealand Government to suppress them by the enactment of legislation. As with colonial governments elsewhere this attempt to suppress indigenous practices by resort to law failed both to modify native beliefs and to prevent the people from consulting traditional healers.

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This article reflects on the issue of the privatization of public space in relation to the recent development of a shopping mall in Sydney. The article argues that the development in Hornsby does not coincide with the need for an open and ‘democratic’ public space. Rather, what has developed is a privatized space, which reduces and controls diversity. This new type of physical space creates a discursive ‘rupture’ with older accounts of public space, which were based on equality and open access. It is argued that the older discourses of public space have been displaced by three new discourses. The three discourses reflect, first, notions associated with the traditional ideas of property and suburban order; second, ideas of neoliberalism and self-sufficiency; third, the notion that new public space is coterminous with safety and particular discourses on consumption. It follows that any activity detrimental to consumption must be limited and that all disruptive potentialities, real or imagined, should be removed.

Debates about Shari’a law and legal pluralism have come to the fore of political discourse in many western multicultural societies including Australia. The mass media, in particular newspapers, have been active in reporting on Shari’a related news items and in doing so, have made a significant contribution to shaping political debate across western nations from governmental to grassroots levels. Understanding how newspapers report on Shari’a will provide important insights into how political discourse about Islam, western Muslims and Shari’a is formed. Utilizing the example of newspapers in Sydney, Australia, this article draws upon methodologies used to analyse the negative portrayals of new religious movements in the press. The article aims to analyse the way that Shari’a has been reported in key newspapers in Sydney over the last five years. It explores a variety of issues influencing the reporting of Shari’a including reporting of Shari’a at the local and international levels, the division between ‘good’ Shari’a (Islamic finance) and ‘bad’ Shari’a (family and criminal law) and differences between newspapers and media owners.